An OTC desk is not a South African invention. It is what happens above the size where an order book stops helping you. A trader quotes one price for the entire amount, holds it in writing while you decide, and settles the fiat leg to an account in your own name. This page explains how that price is built, what it excludes, and what happens when the market moves mid-trade.
On an exchange, you post an order into a public book and wait for someone to take the other side. The price you get is whatever the book gives you as your order fills, and if your order is large relative to the book, the last part of it fills much worse than the first.
Over-the-counter means the trade happens directly between two parties at one agreed price. You are not bidding against anyone. The desk takes the other side of your trade and then manages its own risk — across venues and counterparties, on its own account, after you have already been given a fixed number. The result is that the price uncertainty moves from you to the desk. That is the entire product.
The threshold at which that becomes worth paying for is a property of the book, not of a country. A retail app is the correct tool for a small trade in any market. Somewhere above the point where your own order becomes the biggest thing in the book, it stops being the correct tool, and a desk becomes cheaper even after margin. Thin books reach that point sooner: ZAR order books are shallow compared with USD or EUR books on the same assets, and exchange control makes it slow and expensive for arbitrageurs to move value in and out, so a rand ticket becomes a block ticket at a smaller number than a dollar one would.
Conexus is an over-the-counter desk with a single office, in Cape Town. It quotes crypto assets against fiat in both directions, leads with USDT, and settles to an account in your own name in a corridor confirmed before a quote is given. It does not move capital offshore, does not hold client balances, and does not manage anyone's assets. The full boundary is on the services overview.
Request-for-quote is the standard mechanism on any dealing desk: you ask, the desk prices, you accept or you walk away. Nothing binds either side until acceptance.
You tell a trader the asset, the direction, the size and, if it matters, the deadline. An amount in fiat is enough — you do not need to know the crypto quantity. · Minutes
Identity, proof of address, and source of funds proportionate to the size. Required of the desk by the FIC Act before a single transaction may conclude. Done once, then you are on file. · Usually under an hour
The trader gives you a working level so you can decide whether to proceed. This is still not a quote — it moves with the market and carries no commitment on either side. · Immediate
A binding rate for your exact ticket, in writing, valid for an agreed window. It states the rate, the gross amount, the net amount and the settlement rail. Nothing moves before you accept. · Held for an agreed period
You accept in writing. Wallet addresses or bank details are confirmed through a channel you have verified, and a small test transfer is normal on a first trade. · Same session
The fiat leg is released and you receive a written confirmation with the reference, the rate applied, the gross and net figures, and the trade date for your records. · Same business day
Three inputs, in this order: which market you are actually in, what the depth in that market looks like at your size, and the margin band your ticket falls into.
Rates on this site are drawn from VALR and Luno order books through a cached edge endpoint, and the calculator alongside uses the same source. That choice is deliberate and it is the single most important thing on this page. It is how the desk prices the ZAR book, and the same discipline applies to every corridor it quotes: price against the venue that will actually absorb the trade, never against a global index.
The naive way to price a ZAR trade is to take the global dollar price of the asset from an international feed and multiply it by the USD/ZAR spot rate. Almost every generic calculator on the internet does exactly this. It is wrong in South Africa, and it is wrong in a consistent direction.
South African crypto markets carry a persistent premium over global price × USD/ZAR. The reason is structural, not sentiment: closing the gap requires an arbitrageur to move value across the border in both directions, and exchange control makes that slow, capped and paperwork-heavy. Financial Surveillance will not approve a cross-border transfer for the purpose of purchasing crypto assets, so the usual arbitrage channel does not exist in the form it takes in unrestricted markets. The gap therefore does not close cleanly. It widens when demand for offshore exposure rises and narrows when it falls, and on rare occasions it inverts into a discount.
Quoting a large ticket off a global feed misprices it, in a way that gets more expensive the bigger the trade. If you are selling, a global-feed quote systematically underpays you against the market you are actually selling into. If you are buying, it flatters the price you think you are getting and the difference reappears at settlement. Every market has its own version of this — a local premium, a local discount, a rail that only clears on business days — which is why the corridor is confirmed before a quote rather than assumed.
The mid price on a screen is the midpoint of the best bid and the best offer. It describes the price of a very small trade. What matters for your ticket is how much volume sits behind that price. A trader prices from the depth that would have to be consumed to fill your amount across the venues and counterparties available, which is why the quote for R5 million is not simply five times the quote for R1 million. Depth is set out in more detail on the large-volume trades page.
Indicative only. This is not an offer or a binding quote. It excludes network fees, banking charges and the outcome of compliance checks. A firm rate is valid only once confirmed in writing by a trader. Crypto assets are volatile and investing in crypto assets may result in the loss of capital.
Indicative pricing, drawn from South African order books. Use it to size a trade, not to plan around a number. A firm rate only exists once a trader confirms it in writing.
Ask what feed the price is built from. If the answer is a global index multiplied by a spot FX rate, you are being quoted a market your trade does not execute in. Our indicative data comes from VALR and Luno order books and is always labelled indicative.
The desk's revenue is a margin applied to the local reference, expressed in basis points, and it steps down as the ticket grows. That is the whole fee model. There is no separate commission on the trade, no monthly account fee, no withdrawal fee, and no charge for asking for a quote.
The ladder works on three principles, and you should hold the desk to all three:
Two things sit outside the margin and are always disclosed before you accept: the blockchain network fee on the crypto leg, which is paid by whoever sends, and any bank charge on an unusual settlement instruction. In South Africa the supply of a crypto asset is a deemed financial service and is exempt from VAT under section 2(1) of the VAT Act; a separately charged service fee, if one ever applies, may attract VAT and would be shown as such on the invoice.
Illustrative only. Every rate below is an invented round number chosen to make the arithmetic readable. It is not a quote, not a current price, and not a claim about the desk's margin — the published bands are on the fees and limits page.
Assume, purely for the arithmetic, that at the moment of the trade:
| Pricing basis | Rate per USDT | Fiat you receive |
|---|---|---|
| Global feed × USD/ZAR (how a generic calculator prices it) | R17.60 | R968,000 |
| South African order-book mid (the market you are actually selling into) | R18.00 | R990,000 |
| Desk quote: local mid less an illustrative 0.5% margin | R17.91 | R985,050 |
The point of the table is the ordering. Pricing off the local book rather than a global feed is worth R17,050 on this illustrative ticket. The desk's entire margin, in the same illustration, is R4,950. The venue you are priced against matters several times more than the margin you are charged — which is why the first question to ask any desk is not "what is your fee" but "what are you pricing off".
On settlement, R985,050 leaves by EFT to the account in your name, and you receive a written confirmation showing the 55,000 USDT received, the R17.91 rate applied, the reference, and the net figure. The network fee on sending the USDT is paid by you as the sender, in the same way it would be on any transfer. Nothing about this trade produces a tax position that the desk can advise on; keep the confirmation for your tax practitioner and read the crypto tax guide for the general framework.
Live indicative pricing on this site is published against ZAR, because that is where the order-book data comes from. Any other settlement currency is confirmed with a trader before a quote. The network is confirmed in writing before anything is sent, in both directions.
| Asset | Ticker | Networks accepted |
|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | BTC | Bitcoin, Lightning |
| Tether | USDT | TRC-20, ERC-20, BEP-20, Solana |
| Ethereum | ETH | Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base |
| USD Coin | USDC | ERC-20, Solana, Base |
| Solana | SOL | Solana |
| XRP | XRP | XRP Ledger |
| BNB | BNB | BNB Smart Chain |
| TRON | TRX | TRON |
If an asset is not on this list, ask before assuming. The desk will sometimes quote outside the list for a well-known asset with real local liquidity, and will decline anything it cannot price or cannot trace. Privacy coins and mixer-tainted deposits are declined without exception, because the desk's obligations under the FIC Act do not bend.
Sending on the wrong network is the most common self-inflicted loss in this market, and it is usually irreversible. Confirm the chain, send a small test amount first, and confirm the address through a channel you have checked on the verify our channels page.
In South Africa the rand leg moves on one of three rails. In any other corridor the rail is confirmed before the quote rather than assumed.
The standard rail. Same business day for most ticket sizes, subject to your bank's cut-off times. Inter-bank credits can reflect the following morning. It has the highest per-transaction ceiling of the three, which is why large tickets normally settle this way.
Near-immediate credit within banking hours, at a higher per-transaction cost and a lower ceiling than EFT. Useful when a deadline is measured in hours rather than days — a transfer duty payment, or an attorney waiting to lodge.
Instant, low-value rail available across the major South African banks. The per-transaction cap set by the participating banks makes it suitable for smaller tickets and top-ups, not for a full block settlement.
Fiat settles only to an account in the same name as the verified client. The desk does not pay third parties, does not split a settlement across unrelated accounts, and does not handle cash. Where a trade legitimately has to reach someone else — a conveyancing attorney's trust account on a property purchase, for example — that is a documented structure against a signed agreement, not an exception to the rule.
A large inbound credit may be queried by your own bank. That is your bank meeting its own obligations, not a sign of a problem, and it is dealt with by handing over the written trade confirmation. The large-volume page covers this in more detail, and the mechanics of both legs are on the settlement page.
This is the question people are too polite to ask, so here is the honest answer. Onboarding happens before the firm quote, not after it, and the reason is that the desk is barred from concluding a transaction with a client it has not verified. The price risk during onboarding therefore sits with you, not with the desk, because there is no agreed price yet.
What that means in practice:
The document list is published in advance on the onboarding page precisely so that nothing about this stage is a surprise, and so that the delay is measured in minutes rather than days.
Order-book depth, slippage and tranche settlement on block tickets.
The exact document list, and why the FIC Act requires it before a trade.
A practical comparison of the routes out of crypto into rand, and where each one bites.
On an exchange you execute into a public order book and receive a volume-weighted average fill. On a desk you receive one price for the whole amount before execution, and the desk carries the execution risk. For small amounts an exchange is usually cheaper. At size, order-book depth makes it more expensive even after the desk's margin.
No. Indicative pricing exists so you can size a trade. A firm rate is quoted by a trader for your specific ticket, confirmed in writing and held for an agreed window. Only that number binds either party.
For an agreed window, which the trader states when the rate is given. It is short because the desk carries market risk for its duration. If the window lapses you simply ask for a fresh quote — there is no penalty for letting one expire.
The order depends on the outcome of due diligence and on the history of the relationship, and it is always agreed in writing before acceptance. On a first trade a small test transfer in both directions is normal, so that each side has confirmed the other's details. Confirm all details only through the channels listed on the verify our channels page.
BTC, ETH, USDT, USDC, SOL, XRP, BNB and TRX. Live indicative pricing is published against ZAR, and the settlement currency is confirmed before a quote. The networks are listed in the table above and confirmed in writing before anything is sent. Anything the desk cannot price or cannot trace is declined.
No. Settlement is by bank transfer only, to an account in the verified client's own name. Worth clearing up a common confusion: the cash threshold report under section 28 of the FIC Act, above R49,999.99, applies to cash — not to electronic transfers.
Until a firm quote exists, the price risk is yours and the level you were shown moves with the market. From the moment a trader confirms a rate in writing and you accept it, the risk is the desk's. This is the argument for completing verification before the day you need to trade.
To a company account, yes, where the company is the client and has been verified, including its ownership structure and beneficial owners. To an unrelated third party, no. Structures such as a conveyancing attorney's trust account are handled against a signed agreement as a documented arrangement, not as an exception.
In South Africa the supply of a crypto asset is a deemed financial service and is exempt from VAT under section 2(1) of the VAT Act. A separately charged service fee, where one applies, may attract VAT and would appear as its own line on the invoice. This is a description of the law, not tax advice.
The desk is built for size and the margin band narrows as the ticket grows. Current minimums and band thresholds are published on the fees and limits page.
Send a trader the asset, direction and size. You get a written rate for the whole amount, the net figure and the settlement rail before you commit to anything.